Long-Time Hawaii Senator Daniel Inouye Dies at 88

12/17/2012 7:08PM

Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii died Monday evening in Washington, D.C., after suffering respiratory failure. WSJ's Naftali Bendavid looks back at Sen. Inouye's life that spanned the WWII battlefields to almost nine consecutive terms in the U.S. Senate.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

I ... Senator Daniel in a way of why he has passed away at age eighty eight ... he died of respiratory complications in a Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC ... I certainly was really one of the longest serving senators in history to use the second longest after Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia ... and the story is synonymous in many ways the story of the state of why he was the first ... congressman representing allying after an eighteenth state in nineteen fifty nine ... and sixty two he was elected to the Senate and served almost nine full terms ... as the U S senator from home I was also a war hero he lost an arm he chewing doubt ... he joined up shortly after Pearl Harbor actually answered in a unit that was made up ... solely of Americans of Japanese descent ... I he was charging a machine gun when he was disarming was ... a was decorated for that reason he was known in part for his service in the Watergate Committee where he was the case of a national figure at that point ... was well known and seen by a lot of Americans in any way to chair the Iran Contra committee ... doesn't became chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee where he was occasionally criticize firm Cork by certain ... critics of the way the Senate and Congress does its business ... but he was well respected well regarded by his fellow senators ... as somebody who is Courtney and always the gentleman in some ways the old fashioned center at its ... height even will be quieter in recent years ... as he is the age of progress I'll bite into a summing up the way that he was associate with why ... his office is the ... last word before passing away was the word Aloha ... for The Wall Street Journal this is Naftali Bendavid unwashed ...